“As for writing novels – it’s what I’ve done for 30 some-odd years. I can’t suddenly say I’m going to take up golf. I need something in my life. As long as I can write a coherent sentence, I’ll keep at it.”

“Being a novelist is the adult version of a kid creating a make-believe world. But unlike a child, a writer of fiction has to come up with a structured story, one that has as much meaning for others as it has for her.”

“I hate when people say, ‘Oh, they laughed all the way to the bank.’ That’s nonsense because the most cynical, unhappy people are Hollywood screenwriters. They earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for work that’s never made.”

“It’s no coincidence that I began writing the day my daughter started school. I knew everything I knew before I began to write, but I was raising two children and didn’t have the time to get to the typewriter.”

“It’s not all ‘Jane Eyre’ out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she’s one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.”

“My first novel, ‘Compromising Positions,’ was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends’ December decorating options.”

“We joined a Conservative synagogue. I began learning through engagement, rote and reading. Suddenly, I belonged… well, to the extent that a novelist can ever feel she is part of a group; we may be part of a minyan, but we’re not fully merged into the community.”